


Training jasmine how to vine

by Toothless



Series: coil my tongue [4]
Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Always a Girl!Raylan, Childhood, Dysfunctional Family, Female Relationships, Gen, Mentions of Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-31
Updated: 2014-01-31
Packaged: 2018-01-10 16:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1162037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toothless/pseuds/Toothless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frances is thirtythree and dead, and they bury her on the land.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Training jasmine how to vine

Frances dies when Raylan is nineteen. Frances dies three times all in all, but that is the one that takes. They bury her in the yard because that’s what you do with family. You put them in the same ground they spent their entire lives trying to crawl away from.

 

At thirtythree, Frances took Raylan shopping. They ate ice-cream and pie at _Mathilda’s_ and wore matching pink and purple friendship-bracelets. Their feet touched beneath the slick, red plastic table, accidentally not at all. Raylan remembers feeling a sweet swell of warmth in her chest, a brief touch of skin against skin.

At thirtythree and four months, Frances had planned it out, meticulous and orderly. The perfect procession of a marching band, as finely tuned as a chorus at church. She leaves her favorite pearl necklace, carefully hidden for years from Arlo, on top of her dresser. Frances dots two drops of perfume on the back of each wrist and paints her lips in a delicate, peach pink. She doesn’t write a letter, or call her minister or pray. She smoothes a hand over her bracelet once, twice, and reclines on the bed.

 

In the end, it’s Raylan who finds her, the first misstep of a perfect choreography, and it’s Raylan who pushes her fingers in the back of Frances throat, and Raylan who presses, again and again, against Frances chest. In the end, it’s Raylan who stumbles outside, as weak as a newborn calf, and throws up on the porch, shaking like she’s freezing over, like she’s gaping empty inside, and calls for an ambulance.

  
Frances is thirtythree and dead, and they bury her on the land.


End file.
